


Of Nice Girls, Rationales, and Female Empowerment

by LunalitSol



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Courtney's amazing dads, F/F, LGBTQ Themes, Original Character(s), discussion of sexuality, light mention of depression and suicidal thoughts, references canon suicide attempt, tape crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunalitSol/pseuds/LunalitSol
Summary: Four times Courtney Crimsen struggled with her more-than-platonic feelings toward other girls and the one time she just let herself be.





	Of Nice Girls, Rationales, and Female Empowerment

Of Nice Girls, Rationales, and Female Empowerment 

 It was easy enough when it was just her stomach and chest feeling warm at the thought of certain characters: there was Blossom and Buttercup in the Powerpuff Girls; Topanga in Boy Meets World; Rose in Titanic; and, _oh_  Selena Gomez in that Disney show, Wizards of Waverly Place. There was also her ‘brief’ obsession with the possibility of Gabriella and Sharpay in the High School Musical movies. Even her pre-adolescent daydreams of Kim Possible and the villainess Shego, imagining over and over one of them pulling the other into a magic end-of-the-movie style kiss.

 That could all be waved off. She had two dads that told her all the time how much she was capable of doing, how much she was capable of being. Of course, Courtney liked her characters smart and driven and emanating girl power from every pore. That was only sensible, really. It wasn’t even a stretch to picture two such girl characters together. After all, again, she had two dads. It could be rationalized as a kind of projection, taking what she saw all the time at home but picturing it with bodies like her own. That could be normal. That could be nothing.

 Then, there was Corinne.

 Courtney was eleven when her dads had to hire a new babysitter. Corinne was seventeen, black hair and bubblegum and three hoops in one ear. She read books with Courtney all the time, and not just the preteen chapter books like that condescending American Girl series or the awful Goosebumps rip-offs she kept getting for her birthday. No, Corinne would sit with her in the Crimsen’s living room, both their legs crossed and knees inches apart, reading aloud in her hypnotic voice that moved octaves with characters. She brought Courtney into new worlds easy as air. Uglies and The Hunger Games and Twilight and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Mortal Instruments and more Anne Rice books than she’d known existed and and and.

 Corinne was amazing.  

 And then Corinne got a boyfriend, and Courtney’s stomach had hurt at just the thought, the concept of it. The first time she saw Corinne kiss the guy (actually named Lucian- gross), her heart had dropped, and she could only picture him like… like he was Drakken or Voldemort or something. Like he was the epitome of all that was stupid and ugly and evil. Like he was a fictional piece of shit, but Courtney couldn’t figure out how to close the book on him, turn the channel, make him go away.  

 Why would someone like Corinne want someone like him?

 Courtney had pictured them over and over that awful night, had cried dramatically into her pillow for what felt like forever.

 Less than two weeks later, she’d convinced her dads that Corinne wasn’t getting enough time for her schoolwork now that she was in her senior year and probably should be more of an emergency sitter, if that. She had a whole typed page of reasons formatted like a persuasive essay that she read aloud to them after dinner and they spent the rest of the night dropping comments about how smart she was and calling her their “little lawyer”. Like they were so proud. It was the worst and the best rolled into one. She blew an eyelash off her fingertip before bed and wished they could all just move on.

 Wishes never seemed to work.  

 Corinne babysat for Courtney one more time before she left. She told Courtney how much she missed hanging out with her, how for a while it had almost felt like having a younger sister. Courtney’s stomach had been replaced with a boulder at the sentiment. What a pile of shit. Corinne would never have been a sister to her. She had no want for it.

 The weeks after passed, half-normalcy and half-drudgery. Her dads were around a stifling amount, getting into spats more often than usual. It was hard, they’d explained together one night, about a month after Courtney had last seen Corinne, to find a reliable, mature, and trustworthy sitter in their price range, especially because some people didn’t want to see or support a family like theirs. Too many people.

 Guilt and fear warred in her bones for three days after that discussion, and then right before she caved to confession of her sins, of the greed and frustration and want and aching that had settled somewhere around her windpipe, they found a new sitter.

 Mostly, the world moved on. Post-Corinne Crimsen abode and beyond could almost forget there’d ever been someone else. Someone beautiful.

 Some months later, Corinne invited the Crimsen family to her graduation party. The invite had the look of a love letter and the figurative weight of a funeral dirge.

 When the day of it came, Courtney faked sick for the first time in her life.

 It was just as well; she found out from her dad, Todd, whom had still gone if only for posterity, that Corinne spent most of the night attached at the hip to some new guy named Roger. Impotent sadness had swept over her like a tsunami at the thought even then, even after so much time.

 It still couldn’t mean anything.

 _Maybe,_  she’d thought, _maybe I’m jealous of him. Of Corinne having him. Or them- Lucian and Roger._

 Or maybe- maybe it was even like how she felt about Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. Courtney kind of idolized them.

 And yeah, so what if she thought they were all attractive too, the singers and Corinne? It would have been weirder not to think that, at least objectively. After all, she wanted to be them or be like them, not to be with them.  

 Not to be with them. Definitely not. How could she?

↛↹↛

 There were others like Corinne, older girls whose power and presence she would find herself… enamored with. Andrea when she was twelve. Stephanie when she was thirteen and fourteen. Willow. Jasmine. Emily.

 And then, she was sixteen going on seventeen- and there was Hannah.

 Hannah who was gutsy and melodic and smart and- crap, so gorgeous. Eyes you could sink in. A voice you could listen to for hours. Hair thick and soft and russet brown, like a hearth under sunlight. The skin of her was beautiful. The mind of her was like a wishing well Courtney wanted to climb into. The heart of her- Courtney longed for it. She didn’t mean to, but there it was.

 A big part of her knew it was a crush. A smaller but louder part fought tooth and nail for some platonic explanation. A tiny shrieking sliver of her brain was just Hannah, on stereo repeat, wanting and acting because there was nothing that could overpower the magnitude of that name.

 Well, until there was.

 Courtney had kissed people before. Obviously. She’d even kissed a girl once in kindergarten, just on the top of her back as some odd gesture of comfort or something. She’d never kissed anyone, let alone another girl, like she kissed Hannah Baker, like Hannah Baker kissed her. It was hot and sweet and terrifying and exhilarating, and then…

 Then, too-bright light and clicks and only cold horror being left behind. Goosebumps she couldn’t discern the origin of. Fucking Tyler Down.

 Courtney’s blood was composed of erythrocytes, leukocytes, platelets, plasma, and fear. She didn’t sleep that night, her body thrumming with the churn of her faulty blood, the click of a camera like it was in her bones, the feel of kissing like a shadow, making her heart sing and lungs close up. She could hear the jeering already.

 If this was right- if _she_ was right- why would it all go so wrong?

↛↹↛

 It was almost funny.

 While Courtney was chasing after Hannah, she’d also been going out of her way to avoid Laura. Hannah- Hannah was a maybe. She was a possibility but a slight one. Odds stacked against her but with the edge of a chance there- just enough to shoot warm, sparking adrenaline directly to her veins.

 And hey, if Hannah was straight, Courtney could maybe… well, she’d feel stupid but she could also maybe just move on then. Find a boy that could turn her world.

 Laura, though? Laura wasn’t a question. She was a lesbian. She was out.

 And Laura was cute and hot and confident and absolutely dangerous. She was a Hannah with much more probability and seemingly less baggage. A girl with a bonfire smile, the promise of companionship in her knowing blue eyes. Laura was leather jackets and brazen snapbacks and sports bras, a total disinterest in dressing herself up to impress anyone. Like she was at home in her own skin, in her personality and sexuality. In short, Laura was terrifying.

 Or she was, until the day that Hannah died, until tapes found their way to Courtney's doorstep, until Courtney had much more immediate things and people to worry about.

 Because the tapes hadn’t taken enough already, they turned Laura from the possibility of everything to the cinders of nothing by sheer virtue of existence. It felt like every time they even met eyes, Laura could almost see right through Courtney. In the right light or with enough time, she might see beneath makeup and prim clothes, past all the florals and the neon paper efforts she'd made to memorialize Hannah and prevent another suicide. She might glimpse the worm in Courtney, the part underneath it all that was slimy and ugly and afraid. The others had caught those glimpses, and they were revolted; so they held up their magnifying glasses against the sun to watch her desperately move, to watch her burn. If Laura got pulled into it too? Maybe neither of them would survive.  

 So, she killed it. Courtney held up the possibility of her crush on Laura like a shield and let it get demolished in her stead. No more prolonged eye contact. No more watching Laura even when she wasn’t looking. No more borrowing pens in history class. No more excuses to bump arms walking down the hallway. No more crush.

 She couldn’t destroy anyone else.

↛↹↛

 It turned out neon posters really didn’t do all that much to prevent tragedy. Courtney had known that already on some level, she thought, but not the right one because she hadn’t seen Alex Standall’s near death coming. And they were… friends, kind of? Like with Hannah, her brain couldn’t decide what to call him. She tried to put on her best face and do what she could. Focus on the positive, even, like how she never had the serious talk with her dads about the picture of her and Hannah’s kiss that had come up at her deposition, because instead news broke of Alex’s critical condition. His attempt. She hated herself even more for thinking of that as a positive.

 And Courtney was loathe to admit it, but she was struggling. Her dads offered her truly incredible support about it all, too much sometimes, but she didn’t know how to show them the warped face she kept seeing in her own reflection. She didn’t want to hurt them. They worked so hard. All she wanted was to make them proud, but it was like she didn’t know how anymore. It felt like the atomic composition of her came down to her lip-gloss and her lies. And what else was she anymore?

 She printed brochures about suicide and depression red-flags to hand out to kids at school, then shredded them all when the Principal asked that she get them back and told her they weren’t sanctioning discussion of suicide on school grounds, would actually be punishing it now. After, she texted everyone to meet at Monet’s, sat in the spot Alex would probably have taken, and passed around the remaining pamphlets, feeling herself shrink under the sheer anger that came at her from everyone.

 “Red flags,” she had said when the chorus of cuss words in her direction calmed down. “I want to do this as much as any of you, but clearly we have to at least once. This doesn’t have to be about the tapes.”

 “Bullshit,” Clay had spat in her direction. “If all of you weren’t so desperate to hide the truth about Hannah, maybe Alex’s guilt wouldn’t have gotten so out of control.”

 It had rapidly spiraled into a huge argument. Accusations from every side. Zach had just about started crying telling them how Alex had said something about killing himself ( _"do you die, too?”_ ) that he and Justin had written off as dramatics. Ryan started going on about statistics and brought up LGBT risk, looking at her way more than he should be. Clay slammed a fist on the table and yelled about how Alex might never wake up, _sound like someone else we know_. Meanwhile, Jessica actually did cry, ripping up Monet’s napkins and leaving their thin scraps all over the table. Tyler, who had shown up as if any of them had invited him or wanted him around, made some snide, sad-sack comments about how maybe someday they'd learn to listen and stop treating everyone different like crap, like his creeper tendencies were at all comparable, then stormed off to visit Alex at the hospital with a last passive aggressive jab about how only he and Zach had been to the ICU more than once.

 Sherri, who had told them all right away that she was probably getting officially arrested in the next few days or whenever charges came in officially, just stared at the painting on the wall behind Clay's head, telling bags undisguised beneath her eyes. Marcus tried to talk about how they’d all had to worry about themselves and their own problems and how the red flags could be caused by a bunch of things. Reminded them firmly how Alex had always been weird and troubled. She couldn’t let his words make her feel any better, though, couldn’t absorb the political line-walking and scapegoating Marcus was so good at; so, she floated away and down.

 It was like everything was dark.

 When Courtney asked for help, she did so because she had amazing parents and a good future if she could figure out how to swim through all the shit that had stacked up around her- and she knew if she phrased it right, with Alex’s recent suicide attempt all over the local gossip, her parents wouldn’t worry or blame themselves. She hated that, too, how all the awful things for other people had made a perfect storm for her to get help with minimal personal risk. She put it to her parents like a preemptive measure, with lots of _research has shown_ and metrics of how therapy could benefit everyone. She showed them a flow chart of how she could reassemble her extracurriculars to fit it in to her schedule, even for just a while.

 They didn’t need convinced, though they listened through Courtney’s whole speech and gave her their usual praise. She had her first therapy appointment a week later via some pulled strings and connections, with someone who specialized in grief, as well as LGBT*Q issues, just in case, just because her dads were her dads. It was another half-truth, which was rapidly becoming Courtney’s specialty, but at least it got her in the door.

 She met Addie in the waiting room before her second visit.

 Addie went to another school in the city. She sat next to Courtney in a stiff-backed plastic chair, turned to offer a handshake, her name, and the fact that her mom and stepmom had both died in the last year.

 “A girl I was kind of friends with committed suicide last month,” Courtney had told her, even though (or maybe because) she hadn’t asked. Definitely even though and because they were basically strangers. “I might have been part of why she did it. And then a boy I was also friends with almost killed himself two weeks ago. He’s in a coma.”

 “Died by suicide,” Addie had said gently. Reached a hand out and put it on Courtney’s even though they’d only just met. “You’re supposed to say died by suicide. I guess because it’s not really anyone’s fault. My mom, too, by the way. My step-mom was a car accident though.”

 She had streaks of red in her black ponytail. Hints of sweat on the copper of her skin.

 After Courtney’s third appointment, Addie was still in the waiting room. She was wearing a crop top even though it was December, had some kind of bomber jacket draped over her arm, and she smiled when she saw Courtney. Took her by the hand like it was nothing.

 Said: “Come on, we’re going out.”

 Her car had a rainbow bumper sticker, another one of the bisexual pride flag, and a last that said “I like chicks and cocks” with the outlines of a rooster and baby chicken done up in pink and blue gradient. She caught Courtney looking and winked.

 “That one was a gift from one of my best friends. I think my dad totally hates that I have it, but he’s so worried about not offending me.”

 There was a cross hanging from her rear-view mirror.

 When Courtney asked where they were going, Addie just said some cryptic fortune cookie line that reminded her of Tony Padilla but in kind of a good way. Courtney wondered aloud if they knew each other and Addie just laughed, eventually saying one of her best friends was his cousin and used to go to Liberty, but that was the extent of it. Made a joke about how all Latinx people didn’t know each other, even in the gay community. It was like she said everything just exactly how she thought it.

 The very notion sent an ache down the sides of Courtney’s throat, into her chest, and down and down until it settled hot and alive between her legs.

 Addie had brought them to some local nature reserve, perched atop a winding trail to overlook the city in lights and smog.

 “This place makes me feel something,” Addie had said. Her shoulder was cold, her jacket on the ground beneath them.

 Courtney slipped out a hand from her cuff then put it back. She drew up her courage and scooted closer to the other girl until their bodies were pressed together, just a seam of skin and clothes between them.

 “I’m a lesbian,” she’d said into the stillness, scuffing the heel of a boot against the frozen ground.

 “I thought so,” Addie had said, leaning back into Courtney. “Gaydar and all that. Plus I saw you check out my tits.”

 “Sorry,” Courtney had muttered, but Addie just leaned her head to rest on Courtney’s shoulder.

 “Don’t even girl. I checked out yours too. It’s okay, you know.”

 “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not ready to be out yet. I’m… scared.”

 And Addie had picked her head up, dropped a light kiss to Courtney’s cheek, taken her hand.

 “We all are,” she had said. Just like that. Like she got it. Like Courtney wasn’t ugly or alone just because she was afraid or could say screwed up things. Like she could be the bad but also the good.

 When they kissed, it was long and hot and not like with Hannah at all. It was amazing or maybe the next level above that. Courtney’s breath came in gasps, her fingers tight and desperate in Addie’s skin. She pressed kisses to her neck, down to her collarbone then back up, licking into the warmth of Addie’s mouth. One of her hands curled into swirls of black and red hair, the other cupping breast. And there she was, just Courtney inside herself, whole. Feeling found under the stars, in the dark of night but with light like it was everywhere.

 If this was who she was, maybe she could be okay.

 Three months and several (totally casual) make out sessions with Addie later, she got a boyfriend- just to be sure.

↛↹↛

 The first time Courtney saw Tamika, she and Addie were in Monet’s, just talking. Addie was telling her all about some guy and an ex-girlfriend, eye rolling over love triangles, and she caught Tamika watching. Their eyes met, and her heart was racing just like that.

 The next time she saw her, they were in the hall at school. When they looked at each other, they both smiled. Tamika’s gaze moved over her. Later, Courtney read and reread the graffiti in the bathroom, the _Tamika eats pussy_ that had been there most of the semester. Like that was something to be ashamed of. Obviously, a lot of people thought it was. Well, screw them.

 She ran into Tamika at Monet’s later that day, invited her to sit with her and Addie for a while and told her what she’d thought earlier looking at the graffiti. Tamika’s eyes were brown and bright and warm enough to rest in. Courtney remembered that thing on Jessica’s tape about her belief that hot chocolate could make anything feel less shitty than it was. Jessica had changed her mind lately, and Courtney wondered distantly if she could change it back. Maybe she could. She was starting to think things like faith and hope and confidence could be just as contagious as hate and fear.

 When Tamika left, Addie nudged her and grinned, said a couple quiet, vague things about good work and, “She’s definitely interested.” Asked if Courtney was still kind of dating her beard or if she was ready to dump his ass. Courtney could feel the blood rushing hot to her cheeks as she muttered back for Addie to shut up.

 She still wasn’t ready to come out definitively to the world or even herself, but she was getting close.

 And then it didn’t matter, because she was facing down a courtroom and a woman determined to make Hannah into someone she wasn’t. Hannah who had been so kind to her when they kissed. Hannah who had been everything Courtney wasn’t, fierce like fire. Hannah who she had totally screwed over in service of a secret she knew for sure lately that she could never keep, not forever. And her dads might be hurt and upset, but she was so tired of wearing lies like another skin. In so many ways, it was too late to be the friend to Hannah that she could have been, should have been, but this was something she could do. It was something she had to do.

 So, just like that, even though she wasn’t totally ready yet, Courtney had come out.

 And it was okay, or it would be. It was right.

 She had the best dads anyone could have asked for. She had texts of support from Addie, who she was so grateful she'd chosen to be just friends with (eventually not even ones with occasional benefits), since it meant she had someone who just got _it_ , got _her_ without any of the extra school drama, and even if they only got to hang out twice a month. That night, there was a Facebook message from Laura, offering congratulations and apologies for how it happened and a listening ear if Courtney ever wanted it. The next day at her locker, there was Ryan, equal parts sass and support that she hadn’t at all expected. Tony gave her a hug the first time he saw her, as did Alex and Jessica and Clay. Even Marcus gave her a “good for you”, voice walking that line between too casual and too sincere.

 She had all these people around to keep her feeling warm.

 How could a part of her that had brought so much good be anything bad? How had she been more wrong about this, about her own sexuality, than she’d been about anything else in her life?

 Courtney was still scared of what people would say, of their looks, of what their hands and words could do, but it was starting to feel just as scary to act like an immovable facet of who she was didn’t belong to her. It was her normal. It was part of her humanity, just another invisible component to her blood. Knowing that, feeling that, took a weight off her chest she’d only realized she was carrying this past year. Breathing felt easier than it had since the first time she’d kissed Hannah, maybe even since Corinne’s boyfriend had kissed her in the door to the Crimsen house while Courtney watched almost eight years ago.

 When she ran into Tamika later, she was embraced immediately. Tamika pulled away from the hug to look at her and she let herself look back, whole body thrumming with happiness, with comfort, with possibility.

 And when the thought came to her that it would be nice to kiss a girl that she could also call her girlfriend, Courtney let it wash over her, let it hum through her skin and linger. She wasn’t hiding from herself anymore. There were plenty of things, too many things, that needed her fight. Her lesbianism just wasn’t one of them.

 It was a wonder to take air into her lungs and just breathe. If this was what her life could be, what it was now? Well, this whole ride was too short and too dangerous to live like her home was in shame, and, really, Courtney was ready to spend some time in her skin like this. There was a whole world and a girl with wild hair and all-encompassing warmth that was waiting for her. God, was she ready for them.

**Author's Note:**

> I love pretty much all the amazing, caring, supportive people in this fandom. I know Courtney isn't really a popular character in comparison to a lot of the others, but season two did a phenomenal job with her redemption, and I honestly kind of love her. She is also just crazy important. Happy Pride month to my LGBT*Q people. Coming to terms with sexuality is a journey, not a war or a race, and wherever you are on the trail a whole fuckton of us have your back. 
> 
> Anyone wants to hit me up or whatever, you can find me on my lame ass general tumblr lunalitsol.tumblr.com. FWIW, I'm back to work on a Zach/Alex thing after this goes up.


End file.
